"Apple justified the price by positioning HomePod as a high-end speaker rather than a virtual assistant, which is smart", she said. Siri can be activated using the command "Hey, Siri". For years, Siri was trapped inside the computers and smartphones, and finally, Apple has open the door for its own home - HomePod.

At the WWDC17 event, Apple also unveiled the new iPad 10.5, iMac Pro and the new operating sytem iOS 11 with the new Control Center along with an updated App Store.

Amazon and Google are early movers in this market.

USA Today noted Limp didn't express serious concern over the HomePod, saying that it was "a little different philosophically" compared to the Echo. It has a 4-inch woofer with a custom amplifier as well as seven beamform tweeters, each with individual drivers. Note that there's still a good deal we don't know about the HomePod yet - Apple declined to comment on if the device will support multiple users, for instance, and it's not clear if it'll integrate with Spotify. It has multi-channel echo cancellation, real-time acoustic modeling and more. If you have two HomePods in the same room, the two automatically detect and balance each other. This is very similar to Sonos' Trueplay feature, which similarly tunes its speakers to any room.

It is safe to say that HomePod is a modified and upgraded version of the iPod, which was mostly marketed to cater to the demand for portable music devices.

Created to work with an Apple Music subscription for access to over 40 million songs, Apple claims that HomePod provides knowledge of personal music preferences and tastes and helps users discover new music.

Just like Amazon Echo and Google Home, the Apple HomePod is an always-listening smart speaker that will stream music, answer your questions and will control your smart home. Year-over-year, the number of US consumers using voice-activated assistant devices is up 128.9%, according to eMarketer.

Again, the difference, though, is Apple's focus on making the most high-end speaker they can that still has smarts. But if that's a problem for you, the Echo or Home may be better smart speaker choices. And fortunately for Google and Amazon, Apple'sSiri is widely seen as lagging behind the competition in both its quality and capabilities. It will be priced at $349 with White and Space Grey color options.

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